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First Council of Nicaea

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Re: First Council of Nicaea

#41

Post by tialaramex »

freitzkriesler2 wrote: post #23
losvedir wrote: post #2

I suppose this is relevant on account of it being Easter. Growing up Catholic, we always said the Nicene Creed during Mass, which kind of enumerates the standard Catholic beliefs. I never thought much about it, but a non-Christian friend who joined me one time said thought it was creepy and cult like, us all standing there saying it in unison. I appreciated a universal, orthodox set of beliefs determined to be "corre…

Protestants still recite the nicean creed assuming they have a high church setting. With modern worship , all bets are off.

The creed recited in both a Catholic and various non-Catholic churches as the "Nicene creed" isn't actually the one agreed at the First Council, there's a Wikipedia page explaining the substantial differences.

The creed does explicitly say it's about believing in "one holy catholic and apostolic church" but by that it doesn't mean the Roman Catholic church specifically. It's talking about a hypothetical church (in the sense of a group of Christians, not a building) which is united.

Christian Churches which don't claim there's a hypothetical united Christian church in which it just happens they got all the details right and everybody else didn't are outliers. Ecumenical discussions (typically between Roman Catholics and other large Christian sects) tend to carefully avoid trying to figure out who is right, instead trying to find matters on which they can agree. So e.g. exactly what's going on with Transubstantiation? Point of disagreement, best to not mention it. Do people sin? Yes. Is this old church building nice? Yes. Should we get a tax break? Yes. Easy stuff. The Nicene Creed is thus in this easy category.

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#42

Post by pvg »

tomrod wrote: post #39
MerelyMortal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only person here inciting a flamewar is you. Nice attempt at "concern trolling" Your trolling in the other comments is the problem that you claim to be against. Everyone else seems to be having a rational discussion without letting their emotions influence their writing except for you. Be a better person.

Oh please. I stated a position that isn't even controversial, noting that these sorts of discussions are not really what folks tend to want on hackernews. Responses have been from agreement to claims of trolling. Feel free to give more compassion to folks with religious trauma as you join us all in being better folks.

are not really what folks tend to want on hackernews

This is simply not true - the thing that's unwanted is flamewars. The goal (aspirational as it may be) is curious conversation. If you are unable, for whatever reason, to engage in a topic with curiosity, that's totally fine but it's on you not to bring deliberate arson to the conversation other people might have.

None of this invalidates your views or experiences but the notion they give you some sort of righteous justification to poop in the thread is preposterous. You don't even have the excuse of ignorance - you've been here well over a decade.

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#43

Post by knightoffaith »

082349872349872 wrote: post #40
knightoffaith wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I just meant that Spinoza was a Jewish heretic, not a Christian heretic (at least, no more than say, Mohammad), since the discussion was about Christian heresies specifically. The encyclical only discusses pantheism rather than Spinoza---I don't know that pantheism is specifically Spinoza's invention. Of course, no doubt that Spinoza wouldn't be considered a conforming Christian by any Christian church, but not…

Thanks for the wokeupabug comments; very interesting! Now I am mediating on the contrast between "God created the best possible Creation" and "God creates all possible Creations" (Spinoza opting for the latter on omnipotence grounds; being limited to creating an element of the lattice is less potent than creating an ideal of the lattice). This seems to imply an infinite lattice* of Creations, for in a finite lattice,…

Right - but "God creates all possible Creations" is true for Spinoza but only in the sense that for Spinoza there is only one possible creation, the one that we are living in now, so God creates the only possible creation. As in, there are no possible potential realities for Spinoza---the only possible world is the one that we're living in. And so for Spinoza, God's omnipotence is expressed through his actualization of creation---that is, roughly speaking, it's not just that God could do anything that is possible, it's that God is willing everything that is possible right now, because the only possible way for things to be is the way things are (this is what wokeupabug means when he talks about Spinoza's conflation of God's power and will). This is, to be sure, something that classical theists would quarrel with.

---------

For your edit:

I don't know about "God & Creation = empty set", it depends on what exactly you mean by that. Classical theists say that all things don't exist independently, but exist in/through/from God (the prepositions vary). What exactly does that mean? Well, a lot of ink has been spilled fleshing out what the relationship between God and creation is, and people have had various ideas on what it is. It seems to me to be an oversimplification to categorize things neatly into theism/pantheism/panentheism without further clarification; these things are complicated. It's been said of Aquinas (certainly a little-o orthodox theologian), apparently, that he's the closest you can be to being a pantheist without being a pantheist.

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#44

Post by 082349872349872 »

knightoffaith wrote: post #43
082349872349872 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the wokeupabug comments; very interesting! Now I am mediating on the contrast between "God created the best possible Creation" and "God creates all possible Creations" (Spinoza opting for the latter on omnipotence grounds; being limited to creating an element of the lattice is less potent than creating an ideal of the lattice). This seems to imply an infinite lattice* of Creations, for in a finite lattice,…

Right - but "God creates all possible Creations" is true for Spinoza but only in the sense that for Spinoza there is only one possible creation, the one that we are living in now, so God creates the only possible creation. As in, there are no possible potential realities for Spinoza---the only possible world is the one that we're living in. And so for Spinoza, God's omnipotence is expressed through his actualization…

OK, how about this model: God (being a Proper god) could create inconsistent worlds, but will not (and the only consistent world is our own). Would this model be true for both Spinoza and for classical theists?

----

for my edit; the formalisations were attempts to convey (although I agree they're probably oversimplifications) the following general ideas:

   God & Creation = ∅
   (the Creator and the Creation are distinct;
    nothing is part of both)

   God & Creation = Creation 
   is equivalent to God ⊇ Creation
   (the Creation is part of the Creator)

   God = Creation
   is equivalent to (God ⊇ Creation ∧ Creation ⊇ God)
   (the Creation and the Creator equivale:
    they may be freely substituted in a proof)

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#45

Post by tomrod »

pvg wrote: post #42
tomrod wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please. I stated a position that isn't even controversial, noting that these sorts of discussions are not really what folks tend to want on hackernews. Responses have been from agreement to claims of trolling. Feel free to give more compassion to folks with religious trauma as you join us all in being better folks.

are not really what folks tend to want on hackernews This is simply not true - the thing that's unwanted is flamewars. The goal (aspirational as it may be) is curious conversation. If you are unable, for whatever reason, to engage in a topic with curiosity, that's totally fine but it's on you not to bring deliberate arson to the conversation other people might have. None of this invalidates your views or experiences…

To quote a recent comment:

> Can you just stop? It's really a much worse thing than whatever your problem with discussion over [a sensitive topic that will certainly bait flamewars] is. There's reams of mod commentary about it. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Since you are wanting to continue conversing meta, feel free, but I'm done. The point has been made and enough folks recognize a toxic topic to HN when they see one (which is why this thread has been flaggedeathed), and I'm happy to leave the dead thread where it stands.

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#46

Post by knightoffaith »

082349872349872 wrote: post #44
knightoffaith wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right - but "God creates all possible Creations" is true for Spinoza but only in the sense that for Spinoza there is only one possible creation, the one that we are living in now, so God creates the only possible creation. As in, there are no possible potential realities for Spinoza---the only possible world is the one that we're living in. And so for Spinoza, God's omnipotence is expressed through his actualization…

OK, how about this model: God (being a Proper god) could create inconsistent worlds, but will not (and the only consistent world is our own). Would this model be true for both Spinoza and for classical theists? ---- for my edit; the formalisations were attempts to convey (although I agree they're probably oversimplifications) the following general ideas: God & Creation = ∅ (the Creator and the Creation are distinct;…

In general, Spinoza and classical theists do not think God's omnipotence means he can create inconsistent worlds (e.g. he cannot create square circles); omnipotence (for them) means that God can do anything that is logically possible. For Spinoza, he thinks this means that only our current world is logically possible, because if there were other worlds that God didn't actualize, Spinoza thinks this would imply God's lack of omnipotence. For Aquinas, a classical theist, see Article 5 in this section of the Summa [0]. For Leibniz (not a classical theist, but having heavy disagreements with Spinoza), God could create other worlds like Aquinas, but unlike Aquinas, thinks this means that this world is the best of all possible worlds, which is why God actualizes this world as opposed to other possible worlds (Aquinas thinks otherwise - see article 6 of [0]).

For your edit, it's not clear exactly what "nothing is part of both" means in the context of God and his creation. I know it seems like I'm being needlessly difficult and pedantic, but the issue is that God is a being unlike any other. So much so that Aquinas would say that my latter statement is technically false - God is not a being, rather, he is the sheer act of "to be" itself. And so spelling out the relationship between God and beings is tricky---what exactly does it mean for a being to be part of/have being through/exist in/have being from something that isn't strictly speaking a being? Those prepositional phrases, when used in relation to God, clearly have a very different meaning than when we use them to characterize the relation of two beings, e.g. a leaf and a tree. That is all to say: classical theists may not disagree with "creation is a part of God" depending on how they interpret "part of"---if this means "creation has its being in God", then this is something perfectly agreeable to them.

[0]: https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1025.htm

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#47

Post by 082349872349872 »

knightoffaith wrote: post #46
082349872349872 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, how about this model: God (being a Proper god) could create inconsistent worlds, but will not (and the only consistent world is our own). Would this model be true for both Spinoza and for classical theists? ---- for my edit; the formalisations were attempts to convey (although I agree they're probably oversimplifications) the following general ideas: God & Creation = ∅ (the Creator and the Creation are distinct;…

In general, Spinoza and classical theists do not think God's omnipotence means he can create inconsistent worlds (e.g. he cannot create square circles); omnipotence (for them) means that God can do anything that is logically possible. For Spinoza, he thinks this means that only our current world is logically possible, because if there were other worlds that God didn't actualize, Spinoza thinks this would imply God's…

For the moment, let's put any "part of/containment/belonging to" relation between creator and created aside (in part due to the subtleties you note; in part because I'm more interested in the necessity and possibility of creations, and —despite having slept on it— don't understand Aquinas yet).

(in parentheses: sorry for my ad-hoc notation earlier; I've been looking for a survey paper on Algebraic Theology to find out what the conventions are for this field, thus far unsuccessfully)

Article 5: I still don't understand properly, but do see that Aquinas' conclusion is that our creation is not the only possible one (and is therefore contingent?) See note about maximum vs. maximal below.

Article 6: IIUC: things consist of their essence and their accidents. If two things share the same essence, we say one is greater than the other if its accidents be greater. It is possible to "max out" the accidents, however, and in that case to create something "greater" one must create something with an essence which is better than the original essence (as 5 is greater than 4; natural numbers having no accidents).

[I fail to find Aquinas' reply to objection 4 convincing, or even necessarily relevant? As far as I do follow it, it does imply that "greater" is only a partial order, as Mary and created happiness (whatever that may be) are both coatoms in this order: anything which is at least as great as Mary must be either Mary or God, and similarly for created happiness] see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(order_theory)#Coatoms

As the reply to object 3 shows, this creation may be the greatest possible creation of its essence, but even if God is limited to creating only the "best" creations, he can always create a universe whose essence is greater than that of ours. (here I am imagining that the essence of a universe might be the set of the possible essences within that universe, and the accidents of the universe would be the set of accidents of incidents of those essences, and the set of all the relations between them) So for instance, our universe is the best possible universe with only 7 colours, but God could create a universe with an 8th colour ("octarine" without loss of generality), and then he would have to create a "best possible" universe under those constraints (todo: the maximum universe, or merely a maximal universe?), leaving open the choice of creating universes yet greater.

For example (taking a small model because we lack infinite wisdom), we could say that possible universes are grammatical english sentences, the essence of a universe being the words contained in it, and the accidents being the position of those words within the sentence. Furthermore, sentence A is greater than sentence B if it can be formed by adding words to B, without rearranging B. Examples: "See Spot run" is greater than "See Spot"; "The man upon the stair wasn't there" is greater than "The man wasn't there"; "See Spot run" and "Dick and Jane" are unrelated: neither is greater than the other. Essence A is greater than essence B if all the potential words of B are also potential words of A, so "See Spot run quickly" is greater than "Quickly, see!" even though there is a rearrangement, because its essence is greater.

From this model we recover Aquinas. Given many essences, it is possible to create the greatest sentence using only those words; {"Run","See","Spot"} has the sole possibility of "See Spot run"; {"fast","he","is","very"} has no greatest sentence, for one can always add another "very"; and {"Dick","Jane","kisses"} has two greatest sentences, for "Dick kisses Jane" and "Jane kisses Dick" are incomparable, however, there are greater creations, for {"Dick","Jane","kisses","passionately"} is a greater essence (with 6 maximal creations).

What errors have I made thus far?

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#48

Post by BrandoElFollito »

panick21_ wrote: post #13

Not sure why this is on HN. Council of Nicaea is a favorite flashpoint for conspiracy theory people. But in reality it wasn't all that special. It was just one event in many that shaped Christianity. Basically its like a ISO Standards meeting. Lots of old guys making obscure arguments based on interpretations of obscure text about things that essentially don't matter outside of a bunch of nerds. The connection betwee…

> Council of Nicaea is a favorite flashpoint for conspiracy theory people

Could you please elaborate on that a bit? I do not know much about conspiracy theories, but I am curious why an event so ancient can fuel contemporary conspiracies

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#49

Post by panick21_ »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #48
panick21_ wrote: post #13

Not sure why this is on HN. Council of Nicaea is a favorite flashpoint for conspiracy theory people. But in reality it wasn't all that special. It was just one event in many that shaped Christianity. Basically its like a ISO Standards meeting. Lots of old guys making obscure arguments based on interpretations of obscure text about things that essentially don't matter outside of a bunch of nerds. The connection betwee…

> Council of Nicaea is a favorite flashpoint for conspiracy theory people Could you please elaborate on that a bit? I do not know much about conspiracy theories, but I am curious why an event so ancient can fuel contemporary conspiracies

Obviously Christianity is important and thus loved by many but that also means its hated by many. The Council of Nicaea is when 'the state' gets very directly involved with 'the religion'. So if you want to claim some ancient conspiracy exists where state and religion conspire, Council of Nicaea is a nice starting point.

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#50

Post by knightoffaith »

082349872349872 wrote: post #47
knightoffaith wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, Spinoza and classical theists do not think God's omnipotence means he can create inconsistent worlds (e.g. he cannot create square circles); omnipotence (for them) means that God can do anything that is logically possible. For Spinoza, he thinks this means that only our current world is logically possible, because if there were other worlds that God didn't actualize, Spinoza thinks this would imply God's…

For the moment, let's put any "part of/containment/belonging to" relation between creator and created aside (in part due to the subtleties you note; in part because I'm more interested in the necessity and possibility of creations, and —despite having slept on it— don't understand Aquinas yet). (in parentheses: sorry for my ad-hoc notation earlier; I've been looking for a survey paper on Algebraic Theology to find ou…

Sorry for the delay.

I think what you've said is generally correct in that: yes, Aquinas thinks that making a thing better is possible insofar as its accidents can be made better, but not its essence since changing its essence would make that thing cease to be that thing. Your sentence analogy is apt. Aquinas does indeed think creation is contingent (though someone like Leibniz does too---it's just that Leibniz thinks God is obligated to actualize the best possible worlds as opposed to other possible worlds, but such worlds are still possible, and thus contingent.) The idea that creation is necessary is somewhat fringe (among theists and atheists alike). The idea that all things that are possible are necessary, modal collapse, is generally seen to be so untenable that if a consequence of an argument is modal collapse, it's almost seen as a reductio ad absurdum. This is the case for, for example, Gödel's ontological proof of God.

Maybe one relevant item here is that Aquinas thinks God is the most perfect, and that God cannot make creation to be as good as him---so while it might be true that God can make something that is better than a particular thing (by making something with a different essence), he cannot make something infinitely perfect (the only such thing is himself).

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